


boys will be bugs

by redlight



Category: The End Of The Fucking World (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friendship kisses, Introspection, could be platonic or romantic, dark themes implied cuz. well. its this show., really vague
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-27 19:08:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19797178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redlight/pseuds/redlight
Summary: They probably shouldn't be making road stops while they're on the run.





	boys will be bugs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rea_Micheal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rea_Micheal/gifts).



> im _so sorry_ this is so late but i picked your prompt about james and alyssa having a soft moment and i hope this is okay

James hasn't been thinking straight, but maybe he's never been thinking straight.

Maybe it's all the gasoline fumes he's been inhaling over the last few days. Maybe it's all the buzz of mosquitoes and damselflies he can't get out of his psyche. Maybe he's just a little bloody insane. Still—this is probably the most free he's ever felt, without all the CCTV loops and the selfie-smattering-screens. As far as he can get, so _far_ , inside the tiny stolen car interior with Alyssa's almost-favorite music blasting on the static-ridden radio station.

Maybe he can still feel the slick-stick of blood on his too-small hands (he's only _just_ begun to notice this in relevance to other men, that he's smaller and slighter, that he's just a fucking kid and that he has no idea what he's doing but does anyone _ever_? except this is _realer_ than that, this is real and terrifying and he's _running_ —)

Still. Maybe he's just thinking too much.

It's not so hard, when he's adorned in tacky Hawaiian print and his knife is a cold dread in his stomach, left miles and miles and miles away from where he is now. It's not so hard, with Alyssa at his side, with her newly dyed hair and wild-frantic eyes and the forced indifference she gives James every so often when she isn't curled up in the same teenage fear he resides in.

They can't stop often, not at all, but Alyssa seems to be convinced that they can out-run this. That they'll run off and be sacred and sweet and saved, that they can evade the very real law and live in their fantasydom teenageland.

No, that's too pessimistic, and Alyssa—for sharp as her wit and dull as her eyes can be, she's so, so optimistic.

James doesn't think she loves him, really. Maybe he doesn't really love her—he's never had any experience to do with any of it, and the velocity-height of his heart could just be a malfunction of his adrenaline glands. He thought he couldn't feel love for the longest time, anyway, and _this_ —he doesn't know what it is, but she doesn't have it for him. He knows she can't. He couldn't bear it if she did.

But god, by god, James is selfish enough to be grateful she's here.

He really would do anything to save her—he already did. He killed a man for her—a horrible, horrible, disgusting man, and James thought he would _be_ that horrible man of all people.

And then he wasn't. And now they're both going to be arrested.

Alyssa, though—she's leaned back into her seat, her brown eyelashes fluttering ever so slight in her sleep. She looks peaceful like this, innocent and calm in a way James wishes his mind could be, in a way he knows her mind can't be.

It's hard, sometimes, to keep his focus on the road with her—but in the forests and marshes of their end of England, sometimes he's irresponsible. He hopes he doesn't drive into a lake, 'cause _that_ runs in his family, but if he does he'd try to save her first.

Yeah. Maybe he's not thinking straight. Maybe he never has been.

Maybe they’ve been driving up the coast for centuries now, and with every brief pause and every terrified bathroom stop the sea saltwater crushes into their lungs and changes the pressure. James has sand in his teeth, now, jagged rocks in his bloodstream to highlight his thoughtflow. He is a statuette driver in the biggest stage at the community theater, and he will die before he takes the mask off.

But maybe he isn't thinking right.

At some point Alyssa gets sick of his gasoline meandering, and she makes him pull to the side, with a look of frustrated boredom and her flower petal shirt sticking to her back with sweat. She drags him out from the driver seat by the grip of her hands and she pulls him into the oceanside.

Distantly, James hears leaves rustle. Distantly, he hears the crash and burn of waves and candlelight. Distantly, he hears tires grinding and skidding and splashing into the depths.

Presently, Alyssa furrows her eyebrows at him, and she steps closer, and she takes hold of his hands.

"We're gonna be okay, James," she says, optimistic and stubborn like rockshores. It'll be a million years before he erodes her any. "We'll be _okay_."

And James—maybe he's spent most of his life trying to lie his way through it, to be socially acceptable and _normal_ enough, but he smiles at her and his lips tremble and his shoulders slump just a little and—

"What if we're _not_?"

He wasn't supposed to say that. Boys will be bugs, after all—and he'd further socialize with the beach ants crawling up his legs from the sands and the buzzerly-damselfly sounds coming from the air.

But Alyssa—her mouth really _is_ expressive, and her eyes soften and she looks at the ground. "Even if it's not, the—we'll be together, yeah?"

James shrugs. He doesn't really know what to do with this, anyway, and he—

He thinks it's the sea breeze kissing him, at first.

Salt on his lips, briefly, then the corner of his mouth. His breath stolen from his lungs, minutely, and Alyssa kissing the corner of his mouth before pulling back and looking back to the ground immediately, like she's looking at the same ants he is, which she probably is.

"Don't say anything," she says, suddenly, rapturely, tiredly. Alyssa is usually louder than this. "We just—we're going to get out of this. We'll figure this out. I just want you to get the stupid pout off your face. Okay?"

James—blinks. Blinks again. Looks back at Alyssa's lips and her frazzled dyed hair and the way she's had to go on her tiptoes to reach him, the way her soft fingers are still wrapped around his scarred ones.

" _What_?" she snaps out weakly, but James shrugs, and he—

He can't find the words to say, with all the sea salt blocking his throat.

He can't find the right thoughts to think, with all the mess in his brain.

But James presses his lips together and he gives Alyssa a careful kiss to the forehead, like the beat of insect wings on skin.

"Okay," he says, fragile, and the corners of her mouth lift up like damselflies, just a little. "Okay—together. We do this together."


End file.
